


Impossible Loyalties

by achray



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Oxford, Warning: implied student/tutor relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 14:37:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achray/pseuds/achray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘You were having sex with your tutor?’, John said, trying but doubtless failing not to sound either surprised or judgemental.</p><p>Takes place in a vaguely season 2 space, not especially canon-compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impossible Loyalties

‘Going somewhere special?’, John asked neutrally, without looking up from the paper.

Sherlock was pulling irritably at his shirt collar – a dark red shirt, the fourth he’d appeared in so far that morning – in the mirror. Without bothering to reply he strode towards his bedroom, shedding his suit jacket and unbuttoning his shirt as he went. The jacket joined at least two others crumpled on the living-room floor, all of which, as far as John could tell, were exactly the same apart from being slightly different shades of dark. There was an ominous clashing of coathangers. John returned his attention to the sports section: he knew from long experience that the more curious he seemed about why Sherlock was showered, shaved and fussing over his dress at half eight in the morning, a time when he was invariably either unwashed in a dressing-grown or still wearing the clothes from the night before, the less likely he was to get an answer.

Sherlock emerged some time later wearing a suit that was only identifiable as different because the previous one was visibly discarded, and a pale blue shirt that John didn’t remember having seen before. It was also tighter than some of Sherlock’s shirts, not that John was noticing. He hoped Sherlock hadn’t bought a new shirt or their nominal takeaway budget for the month was shot. Sherlock went back to gazing at himself in the mirror in a dissatisfied way. He buttoned the top buttons of the shirt, frowned, and then unbuttoned them again.

‘Nice shirt’, said John. ‘Better than the red.’

‘Crimson’, said Sherlock. ‘And if I wanted sartorial advice, I’d be better off with Mrs Hudson.’ He buttoned the shirt to the top again and studied it intently.

‘Or Gok Wan’, John agreed, skimming yet another article on the Olympic stadium. He wasn’t looking, but he didn’t need to in order to know that Sherlock was giving him the particular narrow look he reserved for moments when John was taunting him with popular culture.

Sherlock sighed so theatrically that John looked up. ‘This isn’t right’, he said, still frowning at his reflection, ‘but it will have to do.’

‘Do for what?’, said John, abandoning the paper on his lap. ‘Are you on a case?’ He stressed the ‘you’ very slightly: a case didn’t seem all that likely, but if something had come up, there was no harm in reminding Sherlock that John was supposed to get some input.

‘Going to Oxford for the day’, said Sherlock. He abandoned the mantelpiece mirror and went to collect his scarf and coat from the rack, shrugging them on as he spoke.

‘Should be back this evening, you might get some food in. And drink, I may need some.’

‘Oxford? What’s in Oxford?’ But Sherlock had already left, the door slamming behind him and his footsteps receding down the stairs. John sighed. He supposed he’d find out later, if Sherlock were in a better mood when he got back.

 

**

In the event Sherlock didn’t get back until nearly eleven, just when John was thinking of calling it a night and giving up. He’d actually had a reasonably pleasant day full of minor productive things that Sherlock would have scorned but that gave him a sense of small achievements, laundry, shopping, writing up his latest blog post and cooking a cut-price steak for dinner – partly bought with Sherlock’s iron levels in mind, not that he would eat it - rather than resorting to the microwave, plus washing it down with some better than usual red wine. Following Sherlock’s instructions at least gave him a reason to have an evening off cheap beer; when Sherlock drank, only decent wine or spirits would do.

If John had possessed uncanny powers of deduction, he’d probably have known exactly what Sherlock had been doing in Oxford and why he had been doing it two seconds after Sherlock opened the door, but as it was, all he could tell was that it hadn’t gone well. Sherlock looked unhappy, and somehow deflated. It wasn’t a good look on him, John thought.

‘Wine?’ he said, going for the bottle and pouring a substantial glass.

Sherlock hung up his coat and came over to the kitchen.

‘Australian?’ he said, with the scorn of a man accustomed to only the finest French claret.

‘Special offer’. 

Please tell it me was three for two’, said Sherlock, taking the glass and the bottle and going to slump in his chair.

‘Hey’, said John, waving his own empty glass in Sherlock’s direction. Sherlock looked pointedly at the half-empty bottle. John shrugged and sat down opposite him.

Sherlock took a large gulp of wine and sighed. ‘Go ahead and ask. I can feel your questions, buzzing around in my head’. He raised the hand holding the bottle and gestured loosely, as though swatting at John’s importunate thoughts.

‘What were you up to in Oxford, then?’, John asked.

‘Visiting my old tutor’, said Sherlock gloomily. He took another swig of wine. ‘In hospital’.

‘Oh’, said John. He felt that he was out of his depth here. Sherlock showing the kind of concern that a hospital visit implied for anyone other than John or Mrs Hudson – and even then, John wouldn’t have necessarily expected him – was surprising to say the least; actually leaving London for this purpose was astonishing. Probably not concern then: Sherlock hadn’t said it was a case, but he hadn’t technically said that it wasn’t either; more likely that his old tutor had called him in to help with whatever the reason was that he had ended up in hospital.

‘So’, he said, ‘was he OK? I mean, what had happened?’

‘Stroke’, said Sherlock, bitten-off. ‘Those moronic doctors wouldn’t tell me the details, but it’s unlikely he’ll recover. He didn’t even recognize me’. He downed the rest of the glass and poured another. ‘One of the finest philosophical minds in Europe, and he doesn’t know his own name.’

‘Ah’, said John. Not a case, then. Unless something untoward had caused a stroke, but that seemed a stretch. He tried to tamp down his acute curiosity in favour of concern.

‘So’, he said again, ‘He was…one of your… lecturers? When you were a student?’

Sherlock never spoke much about his university days, and John’s impressions of Oxford, a place he’d never even visited, were mostly a hazy compound of Inspector Morse, Hogwarts, and drunken Tories. He felt that he was treading on entirely unfamiliar territory; an alien world of language and behaviours that only the privileged could access. At this distance John would be hard pressed to remember any of his lecturers' names, let alone visiting them in hospital at least two decades after graduation. And he’d always assumed that Sherlock hated Oxford, that he’d been miserable there.

‘Richard introduced me to sex’, said Sherlock. ‘And drugs’, he added coolly, almost as an afterthought.

John felt his jaw drop and scrambled to recover. Sherlock was watching him, narrow-eyed, waiting for his reaction. He looked more relaxed, but his fingers were tapping restlessly on the stem of his glass.

‘You were having sex with your tutor?’, John said, trying but doubtless failing not to sound either surprised or judgemental.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, clearly at the inanity of the question. ‘Not hard drugs, of course’, he said.

‘Of course’, John muttered, sotto voce.

‘Marijuana mainly, a little LSD – we tried Ecstasy once but it didn’t have a great deal of effect.’

‘I see’, said John.

Sherlock drank the rest of his wine in two gulps and poured out the last of the bottle, looking meditative. ‘Once we listened to the entirety of The Ring Cycle while stoned’, he said, sounding almost – fond. ‘By the time the recording finished, dawn was breaking. Mummy always hated Wagner, but Richard showed me the point’.

John had absolutely no desire to hear about the point of Wagner, which was precisely the kind of tangent that Sherlock could go off on for hours. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to hear about Sherlock and ‘Richard’ either, except that he did, because this was the first and only time that Sherlock had mentioned having sex with anyone, ever. And to visit him in the hospital Sherlock had to have known that he had had a stroke, he was keeping up with an old lover – in touch with him, even – and John hadn’t known anything about it. He probably wouldn’t have known about it now, except that Sherlock was, for him, obviously shaken, and had also just had two large glasses of wine in quick succession on a doubtless empty stomach.

‘You realise how ridiculously pretentious that sounds, right?’, John said. ‘And also - I get that you were shagging, but wasn’t that frowned upon? I mean, you were only, what, eighteen, nineteen?’

‘Seventeen’, said Sherlock, leaning back and gazing at the ceiling. ‘Mummy said she wouldn’t let me go up until I was old enough to vote. I met Richard in fresher’s week, of course, but we didn’t start until the end of my first year.’

He sat back up, took another drink, and looked directly at John, waving the glass for emphasis. ‘You’re thinking of some dirty old man, aren’t you, elderly and bearded, seducing the young innocents. It wasn’t like that. Richard was the second-youngest fellow ever appointed to a chair in Philosophy; he was _brilliant_ , his work on Wittgenstein was seminal, a revelation, and he knew everything, everything about art, music, culture. Before I transferred to be taught by him I was about to throw myself off Magdalen Bridge rather than spend _one more da_ y listening to the imbecilic talk of Britain’s alleged brightest minds. Not to mention the idiocy of my fellow students. I had expected Oxford to be worth it, to be different, but most of them were exactly the same people I knew from school.’ He took another slug of wine. ‘And some foreigners.’

‘You mean, international students’ , said John.

‘Americans’, said Sherlock, with utter scorn. ‘And the Scots and Irish, of course. I believe they sometimes let in the Welsh, too, though I didn’t see them, they were mostly contained in Jesus’. 

John wouldn’t usually have let that last sentence past, but there were other things more pressing.

‘What age was Richard, then, if you were seventeen?’

‘Forty-five’, said Sherlock. ‘But you’re not listening to what I’m saying, as usual.’

‘Sorry’, said John. ‘I’m a bit fixated on you having teenage sex with someone who was nearly thirty years older than you. And teaching you, presumably? Wait, philosophy? I thought you did science at uni.’

‘I did, originally’, said Sherlock. ‘Hence, _transferred_. You wouldn’t believe how dull the degree course was. They wouldn’t even let me work in the labs.’

‘OK’, said John. ‘So you actually did a degree in Philosophy?’ It seemed implausible, but he remembered Mycroft’s description. ‘Scientist or a philosopher’, he’d said. John hadn’t paid much attention to the philosophy part of it, but apparently it had been a genuine possibility.

Sherlock huffed. ‘Maths and Philosophy’, he said, as though condescending to John’s enormous ignorance.

‘Right’, said John.

‘It’s one of the most prestigious degrees at Oxford. Also, I was the only person on the course in my year, so I decided – with Richard, of course – what I would study.’

‘One-on-one lectures’, said John, thinking of his old lecture halls, crammed with upwards of 500 students trying to stay awake and alert. He didn’t mean it to come out as suggestive as it did.

‘Tutorials’, corrected Sherlock. ‘Yes. Of course, they also turned out to be more fun when conducted in bed.’

John’s mind helpfully supplied him with an image of a young Sherlock spread out across an enormous double bed, pale skin and sprawled limbs, stone spires outside the open window, with a faceless man running his hands up his thighs. He really wished Sherlock hadn’t finished the wine. He needed something to do with his hands in this conversation, which he both desperately wanted to stop, and equally desperately wanted to continue.

Sherlock didn’t seem to have noticed John’s distraction. He was looking upwards again, apparently lost in reminiscence.

‘Richard gave me my first silk shirt as well’, he said. ‘Left it outside my door, early in my second term. Pale blue, Agnes B.’

John thought about the shirt Sherlock had been wearing – was still wearing – and the suit jackets still in a crumpled heap in the corner. An important question occurred to him. He would have sworn that Mycroft’s belief that Sherlock was uninterested in sex was genuine, but the thought that Sherlock had hidden this from him was also inconceivable.

‘Mycroft did suspect’, said Sherlock, without looking back at John. ‘Of course, he was in the Far East for those years, but he knew something was going on. I had to convince him it was just an undergraduate crush. Mummy hadn’t a clue, it was wonderful. Richard took me to Amsterdam for two weeks in the long vacation of my second year and I told Mummy we were going to study Van Gogh.’

‘Amsterdam’, said John.

‘Doesn’t it worry you, having to repeat whatever I say until your brain comprehends it?’, said Sherlock, but without real heat. He ran one hand through his hair and sighed. ‘Actually, I did think we might visit the museums, but it turned out it really was that kind of holiday. There were twenty-four gay porn channels on the TV in our hotel room, and Richard took me out to a sex club half an hour after arriving.’

‘You went to a sex club?’ said John.

‘Richard wanted to experiment with voyeurism’, said Sherlock, in the tone he used to explain something that he thought perfectly reasonable but that everyone else would recognize as illegal, insane or both.

John very much wanted to know exactly what this statement implied, but he also really, really didn’t.

‘You and..Richard were in a relationship, then?’, he asked instead. ‘I mean, you went on holiday together, you were a couple. How long for?’

‘Not a ‘relationship’ in your sense’, said Sherlock scornfully. ‘He was my tutor: he taught me. The fact that we were also having sex was a minor part of that ‘relationship’, if you will. We didn’t date, we didn’t waltz through the streets holding hands and send each other Valentines and whatever else you people like to do.’ He sat up again, drank, and looked at his wineglass, turning it around.

‘We were involved until just after my Finals. Richard thought I would stay on to do a D.Phil. He had a scholarship lined up, money, travel, himself as my supervisor. But by then I was certain I wanted – something more practical. Not sitting in a medieval study, drinking Sauternes and solving crimes at a distance through applied philosophy. I’d gone back to experimenting, when I could get the equipment, and I thought I would spend a few years on straight scientific study, see where it got me. Oxford was too small: I wanted London.’

‘You outgrew him’, said John, carefully.

Sherlock was still looking at his hands. ‘Perhaps’, he allowed. ‘We fought horribly, he accused me of using him and betraying him. True, in a way. It had always been inevitable, really. And I was hardly the first or the last – he would have moved on to someone new the next year.’

John wasn’t sure if there was any bitterness in that last sentence. ‘But you stayed in touch with him’, he observed, as neutrally as he could. ‘You wanted to see him today.’

‘Not in touch, no. He didn’t forgive me. And he despised my choice of career. I told him my plans from the beginning ,but he thought he could talk me out of it, given time. He hated the idea of real life, of getting his hands dirty, of people and mess. It was – necessary - to visit, but if he had recognized me, he would have asked me to leave.’ Sherlock looked up at John. ‘Not really his style, deathbed reconciliations. But it was respectful to see him.’

‘Respectful is not a word I usually associate with you’, said John. ‘In fact, I’m a bit…overwhelmed by all this. I mean, it’s good that you care, don’t get me wrong, I’m just surprised. You’ve never talked about being a student before.’

‘My sordid past’, said Sherlock, smiling, but without warmth. He set down the glass decisively, stood up and stretched his arms above his head. ‘I think I’ll play for a bit’, he said.

Clearly the moment was over. John stood and stretched too. He felt as though if it had been anyone else, now would have been the moment for a hug, or at least a manly pat on the back, but Sherlock was already half-way across the room, reaching for his violin, before this thought was finished.

‘Food in the kitchen’, he said, without much hope. Sherlock grunted, busy tightening keys. That was it, then.

 

**

But of course, that wasn’t it. John had gone to bed telling himself firmly that he felt honoured and pleased that Sherlock had confided in him, that Sherlock trusted him enough to share an important part of his past. When he woke up, there was a moment where he knew that something major had happened the previous night, but couldn’t remember what it was, and then there was the next moment, in which he was hit by emotion like a punch in the gut, shockingly intense. Most of it was anger. Sherlock had let John think that he had never had a relationship, that he might never have had sex, even, unlikely as it might seem – he knew John thought this, it must be ridiculously obvious to him, but he’d never bothered to correct it. Deceiving Mycroft, fair enough, that was part of being siblings, but surely this was the kind of thing you told your friends, that John should know. What else hadn’t Sherlock told him?

Sherlock clearly still cared about this guy – he hadn’t denied it, and he _visited him in hospital_ , for fuck’s sake - and moreover, and this was what John wasn’t sure he could get over, it turned out that everything he had thought he knew about Sherlock, everything he had thought unique about him, might have been not just known by but shaped by someone else. John thought of Sherlock trying on five different outfits to visit someone who didn’t even recognize him, and another shot of feeling hit him. Because Sherlock had said that Richard had bought him his first shirt: he taught me, he had said. What else had Sherlock been taught? Seventeen is an impressionable age – did Sherlock dress, and behave, and speak, and think in ways that this Richard had taught him? Did he fuck that way?

John had been grateful before, many times, that his own first serious relationship, made serious by regular sex and declarations of love, had been with a funny, kind girl who wasn’t afraid to tell him what she wanted in bed and how he could make sure she got it. If you were introduced to sex by someone so much older, in a position of power – and Sherlock wouldn’t even have been over the legal age of consent for men at the time, though as John thought that, he felt ashamed for the thought – what could they do to you, with you, what would you end up thinking about sex. Let alone that _Richard_ was clearly some kind of pervert: voyeurism, for fuck’s sake, that Sherlock could say that so calmly was only a testimony to how fucked up he was, how fucked up he had been by this man and couldn’t even see it. Maybe this was Sherlock’s only relationship, maybe Richard had put him off, off sex, off men, off love or romance or being a couple, maybe he had turned Sherlock into someone who could think of himself as a sociopath; who knew? Maybe Richard and his fucking drug habits had sent Sherlock off to spend his twenties getting high, when he could have been saving people, helping them.

John wasn’t sure if this surprising anger was directed at Sherlock, at Richard, or at himself. Because one of the other things he was feeling was turned on. The thought of an imagined younger Sherlock, softer and gentler, kneeling between the legs of an older man, sucking him, or being sucked by him, surrendering himself; letting someone fuck him, maybe letting Richard watch someone else fucking him, or more than one person: it was unbearably erotic. John had woken up half-hard, not unusual, but he wanted to stroke himself thinking of Sherlock in these scenarios, picturing them. His cock hardened more at the thought. But he wouldn’t, because that would be sick – because he might be pissed off with Sherlock, but wanking to imagined scenarios of your male flatmate’s totally inappropriate past relationship was wrong in ways that couldn’t even be categorized.

John got out of bed and went for a shower, grimly. He hoped that hot water might switch off or derail his train of thought, but his brain felt as though it was on a treadmill, round and round, as he showered and shaved and dressed. He didn’t know what he would say to Sherlock, but fortunately the living-room was deserted when he came down, Sherlock’s bedroom door firmly closed. John dithered for a moment, and then picked up his wallet, coat and keys and headed for the nearest Costa. Actually, he felt like a stiff drink, but at 9am on a weekday morning, caffeine and sugar would have to do. He would have a strong cappuccino and some kind of large pastry, read the papers, sort out his reactions to last night’s conversation in a firm, no-nonsense way, and then go back and carry on with Sherlock as usual, not even bringing it up unless he did first.

By the time he got back to Baker St mid-morning, John had resolved that lustful thoughts about Sherlock past or present were purely the result of not having had a girlfriend or even one-night stand in over three months; that he was entirely justified in being angry at Richard, and if the wanker hadn’t already been in hospital John would happily have tracked him down and put him there; and that a certain amount of being pissed-off with Sherlock was fair enough but that he was over-reacting and should remind himself that, unlikely as it might seem, Sherlock could sometimes be vulnerable.

Unfortunately, when he came back into the flat Sherlock looked up from glaring at his laptop, scanned John briefly, and then said, bitingly, ‘Two and a half hours to worry about my sex life? How little you have to occupy your time.’

‘I wasn’t worrying’, said John. Sherlock’s comment stung, but acute rudeness also suggested that he was off-balance.

Sherlock scanned him again. ‘No, perhaps brooding is more accurate’, he said. ‘Why on earth should you be so bothered about what I did in the distant past?’ He put an unflattering accent on the ‘you’. ‘Why should you care?’

John swallowed, staying still by the door under Sherlock’s gaze. He was sure Sherlock couldn’t tell all the ways in which he was bothered, but not a hundred per cent sure. ‘Why should I care that one of my friends spent their formative years in an incredibly dodgy relationship?’, he said. ‘Of course I care. I’d be inhuman not to.’

Sherlock held his gaze for another moment, and then turned back to his screen, dismissive. ‘I should have known you wouldn’t understand’, he said. ‘Stupid to expect you to accept anything outside your petty little bourgeois conventions and rules.’

‘Oh, like you and Richard, then?, said John. ‘Is that what he was doing, shagging his students, stuffing the bourgeoisie?’

‘If you wanted to be enraged by my sexual history’, said Sherlock, with real venom, ‘you might save it for the years in my twenties when I went cottaging on a regular basis. Usually while high, I might add, and safe sex was hardly foremost on my mind. I’d have thought a doctor might find that just a little more worrying.’

John had nothing to say to this. He hadn’t even taken off his coat, though, which made it easy to turn round and leave.

 

**

He turned off his mobile and went for a long walk, the usual route he took when fuming over Sherlock’s impossibility, and then let his feet take him down the Euston Road. When he got to the Wellcome library, he did what he had known he was going to do the minute he’d left the house – this morning, even – he went in, found a free computer and started Googling with ‘Richard’, ‘Magdalen’ and ‘Philosophy’. He was pretty sure Sherlock hadn’t followed him and couldn’t track him on a computer in a semi-public space: Mycroft, probably, but if he’d been watching John’s route, he’d hopefully think he was just looking up some old medical research for Sherlock in the Wellcome; not the first time. John came up fruitless on his first searches, but when he tried adding ‘Wittgenstein’ it came up straight away. Richard Heddon, author of _Wittgenstein’s Gods_ and _After Philosophy_. Even the reviews on Amazon were more or less incomprehensible, though John gathered that Sherlock’s high estimation was pretty much shared by the world at large, ‘seminal’ , ‘influential’ and ‘field-changing’ seemed to be the most popular terms.

He searched for images, and clicked on the one showing a younger man. It was the cover of a magazine, _Oxford Today_ , and Richard Heddon was posed in a wing chair in an oak-panelled study, legs crossed, reading a copy of his own book, surrounded by an artfully arranged chaos of books, journals and loose papers. The pose was achingly familiar. He was wearing a crisp white shirt, top buttons open, and a pale grey tailored suit. His fair hair fell in wings from a widow’s peak and his face, the kind of face that John recognized as classically patrician, sharp-nosed, thin and handsome, pale blue eyes, in a way that spoke of privilege and old money, had an expression of private amusement. The magazine was dated 1992. Probably just too early for him to have met Sherlock yet.

John logged off and left the library, numb but aware of a sharp feeling edging behind his consciousness. It wasn’t until he had walked down the Tottenham Court Road, gone into Foyles, and had charmed an assistant into directing him to the small Philosophy section, where they actually had a copy of After Philosophy in stock (‘one of the most important philosophical studies of the twentieth century’, ‘altered the discipline decisively’, ‘essential reading’) that he recognized the precise contours of this feeling as something he had felt before. Once, when he was a student, he had had an intense relationship with a girl who had taken him, a couple of months in, to see an ex of hers performing with his band in a smoky pub cellar. As soon as John saw him step up on stage in a wildly fashionable and stylish charity-shop outfit, brush back his hair and strum the opening chords with undeniable skill, he’d known: if this was Kat’s past, then John Watson was not her future. Nothing to do with insecurity about his looks or his skills; god forbid he should ever be like this guy, just, people didn’t change that much, and a lot of things about Kat’s clothes and drinking and taste in music were suddenly much clearer.

And that was what John felt now, buying a book that he would never read, with another picture of an undeniably attractive Professor Heddon on the inside back cover. This was Sherlock’s past, and John couldn’t compete. The fact that he hadn’t fully realised that he was interested in competing was only a further irony. Yes, he wasn’t gay. He didn’t look at men in general and think about what they would be like in bed, and the chances of him ending up in a relationship with a man were almost zero. But that didn’t mean that if he knew an attractive man was interested in him, that he wouldn’t shag him if the opportunity presented itself. Sex was sex, after all, and his army years had provided some helpful practical demonstrations of this fact. But if there was one thing he didn’t do, had never done, it was pine after someone who was uninterested in shagging someone of his gender (Harry’s doing: John had spent what felt like a lot of his adolescence surrounded by attractive teenage lesbians, and he’d learnt the lesson eventually). So he could see that Sherlock was attractive, even despite his personality, but with no evidence that Sherlock was attracted to anyone, men or women, John’s brain (and body) had put him in the look but don’t touch category.

Yet now those barriers had, apparently, crumbled. A Sherlock who had had sex with men – probably many more men than John, if he hadn’t been exaggerating about the cottaging – and not only random sex with strangers but at least one actual long-term relationship with a man, however fucked up that relationship might have been – this was someone who could have been interested in John, but wasn’t. There were of course any number of possible explanations for this, but in John’s current mood he wasn’t interested in persuading himself into accepting one of them: better just to face up to the fact that he wasn’t Sherlock’s type, now that he was holding in his hand genuine, irrefutable evidence of what exactly Sherlock’s type might be.

Clearly John needed to get over this, immediately, so that he could stop being the kind of creepy person who would fixate on shagging their friend. In this spirit he noted that it was now mid-afternoon, he’d skipped lunch, and he urgently needed a drink. Half three on a Thursday was early to try Greg, but worth a shot. He turned on his phone as he left the shop and carried on walking, noting at least ten texts from Sherlock. Scrolling through revealed nothing urgent, though, just irritable variations on ‘Where are you and what are you doing?’, so he didn’t reply. Greg answered his phone on the second ring, sounding wary:

‘John. Something up?’ ‘Something’ in this case meant a Sherlock-inspired fiasco.

‘Nothing’, John said, reassuring. ‘Just going for a pint. Wondered if you fancied skiving off to join me.’

‘Brilliant’, said Greg. ‘There’s been fuck-all to do here all day, I’ve just spent five hours catching up on paperwork. If I leave the office, it’s practically guaranteed that something will kick off.’

‘Sod’s law’, John agreed. ‘And all the more likely if you have a few, so that you’d have to go to the scene drunk’.

‘You make a good point’, said Greg, sounding muffled. ‘Hang on, just shutting down here and getting my coat. Take me about ten minutes to wrap up. Where are you?’

‘Charing Cross Road, round Soho’ ‘Drum and Monkey, then’, said Greg, with the confidence of a man who knew a good pub in every London postcode. ‘See you there in thirty or so’.

Just over half an hour later, Greg slid into the chair opposite, and passed over a bitter. ‘Cheers’, said John, and knocked back a good half.

Greg raised an eyebrow at him ‘How many have you had?’, he said.

‘Two’, said John. ‘And a pie’, he added, for full disclosure.

‘Bloody hell, that was quick’, said Greg. ‘What’s this in aid of then?’

John shrugged. He wanted to tell someone, but he also wanted to forget the whole mess for a while.

Greg gave him a police-officer look. ‘Girlfriend troubles, or flatmate troubles?’, he said.

‘I saw you last weekend’, said John. ‘I’d have been doing bloody well to acquire enough of a girlfriend to have troubles with in the last five days.’

‘Yeah, but not having a girlfriend might be the trouble’, said Greg. ‘I could identify with that, any rate’. John grimaced sympathetically. Greg had stopped wearing his wedding ring four weeks ago and was putting on a brave pose as a single man.

‘Whereas if you’re downing pints alone on a mid-week afternoon because Sherlock’s driven you to it, again, you’ll get no fucking sympathy from me, mate. There’s only one of us here choosing to live with a maniac.’

John snorted, and took another drink. ‘This morning’, he said, ‘Sherlock told me that he used to go cottaging, high, in his twenties. Did you know that?’ He had aimed for casual, but the question came out more accusatory.

‘Just came out with this over the cornflakes, did he?’, said Greg. ‘No, scrap that, that would be absolutely bloody typical of Sherlock.’ He blew out a breath. ‘Yes, I did know that.’

John waited. Greg fidgeted uneasily with his pint. ‘Look, when you came on the scene…well, it was hardly my job to start telling you all Sherlock’s secrets straight off. None of my business. And no-one thought you’d stick it for more than a couple of weeks, in any case. God knows we’ve all done some bloody stupid things in our twenties, it’s just that Sherlock, well, likes to do everything on a grander scale.’

‘You mean, class A drugs and unprotected sex with strangers in public places?’, noted John.

‘Unprotected?’, said Greg. ‘Why would he tell you..oh, trying to wind you up, I see. Yeah, that was about it.’ He leaned forward, speaking lower. ‘He was arrested for it once. That was when I first met him, actually. I didn’t make the arrest, but I was a sergeant then on Vice and I was on duty when they brought him in. Late night, some of the cops were taking the piss, shoving him a bit, talking about his posh clothes, calling him names, you know how it is.’

John nodded encouragingly, though his hands tightened on his pint glass. 

'Anyway’, said Greg, ‘Sherlock seemed completely impervious, looked like he was totally out of it, but when they put him in the cell, he turned round and let out this monologue about who they’d last shagged, when, where, exact details – sounded like some kind of psychic. Never seen cops back off so quickly. No-one wants their sex lives broadcast to the people they’ve just picked up off the streets. I was still on duty, so I stuck around, and after they’d left Sherlock asked me if I had any old cases he could look at. Said he was bored.’

‘Did you give him any?’, said John, fascinated.

‘Not bloody likely’, said Greg. ‘Luckily Mycroft showed up before he could turn on me, waved some ID around and everyone rushed to unlock the cell and escort Sherlock out.’ He tapped his fingers on his glass. ‘We thought he was being handed over to MI5. But I reckon Mycroft locked him in some posh rehab centre.’

‘Really?’, said John. ‘Was that when he got clean?’

‘More or less. I wasn’t there for most of it, of course, but by the time I met him again a couple of years later he wasn’t using. Mostly. And Mycroft was still watching him pretty closely, then, so I can’t imagine late-night trips to Hampstead Heath were on the cards.’

‘Yeah’, said John, and took a drink. ‘It’s not that I’m shocked, really – I mean, Sherlock, anything’s possible. It’s just – I didn’t really think he did sex.’

‘Huh’, said Greg. ‘I always assumed he did sex but not relationships. Or used to. One of the advantages of gay sex, isn’t it, you can just go out and find someone’. He caught John’s raised eyebrow. ‘Not that I’m advocating it, of course, just – women are so much bloody effort sometimes. If you’re straight and you could just go out and get a shag, no questions asked, what bloke wouldn’t be tempted by that?’

‘I suppose’, said John. He wanted to tell Greg about Richard, present him with the evidence that Sherlock had done relationships, at least at one point, but he was uneasy with this conversation. It felt wrong to be talking about Sherlock behind his back, especially when John’s motives for doing so weren’t exactly pure.

‘So’, he said, after a pause. ‘Watch the match on Sunday?’

Greg gave him a shrewd look, then nodded, accepting the change in conversation. ‘Fucking travesty’, he said. ‘That own goal in the second half? Unbelievable.’

‘Couldn’t agree more’, said John, relaxing.

 

**

John got back to Baker Street in the early evening. Drink and the reassurance of a normal pub conversation had made him feel much better, and he tried to ignore the small threads of tension tightening in his gut as he climbed the stairs to the flat. Sherlock was playing his violin, something complicated and repetitive, the same shower of notes over and over again. When John came into the living room he broke off and turned round, violin still under his chin.

‘You didn’t answer my texts’, he said.

‘Didn’t seem urgent’, said John.

Sherlock lowered the violin and moved to put it away in its case. ‘You left’, he said, not looking at John and sounding almost uncertain. ‘I wasn’t sure where you were.’

‘Just out’, said John, more gently. ‘Walked about, met up with Lestrade, went for a pint.’

‘Yes’, said Sherlock. He looked John over, gaze pausing for a moment on the Foyle’s bag. ‘Drum and Monkey, wasn’t it?’

‘Go on, then’, said John, taking off his coat and crossing to the kitchen. ‘Tell me how you knew.’

‘Only pub in the Soho area that has Black Sheep bitter on tap. You’ll always drink it, given the choice, and it has a distinctive scent; even on your clothes’. He closed the violin case, set it on the floor and sat in his chair. ‘I trained myself to identify every beer brewed in the British Isles at one point, by taste and scent’, he said.

‘Must have been fun’, said John.

‘Not as much as you might think’, said Sherlock. ‘And they kept opening new microbreweries’ – he invested this with considerable scorn – ‘just as I finished compiling my data. About this morning’. He stopped. John waited. Sherlock twisted one hand through his hair, pulling.

‘Just because I did things in the past doesn’t mean I’m still doing them’, he said, finally. ‘I didn’t have much sense of self-preservation in my twenties.’

John recognized this as an apology. He came over and sat opposite Sherlock, leaning his elbows on his knees.

‘Look’, he said. ‘I’m not shocked about the cottaging. Though if you haven’t been tested, I’m dragging you to the clinic first thing tomorrow whether you want to go or not. I was just a bit thrown, that’s all.’

‘You were upset’, said Sherlock, flatly. ‘And angry. You’ve only turned your phone off on six occasions in the last year, four times because you didn’t want to talk to me, twice because you didn’t want to talk to Harry.’

John rubbed a hand over his face. Four pints were making it slightly difficult to judge what he could and couldn’t acknowledge. ‘I was upset’, he said. ‘But not at that. It doesn’t matter, it’s fine now. Let’s just leave it.’

Sherlock’s eyes flicked past him to the Foyle’s bag, as though they could see through the cover. ‘You were upset about Richard, not this morning’, he said, slowly. ‘And curious. Internet cafe? No – library computers?’

John sighed. ‘If you already know, why bother asking?’

‘But not just curiosity’, Sherlock said, clearly working something out.

‘OK’, said John, abruptly losing patience with Sherlock’s attempted deduction of his feelings. ‘I was upset because I don’t know anything about philosophy, all right? All this stuff’, and he waved a hand expansively, as if taking in Sherlock’s books and his violin and his sheet music and various esoteric ornaments and objects, ‘it matters to you. You’re rich and you’re cultured and you went to Oxford, and you wear silk shirts and you’re a bloody genius, and that’s fine, great. Just, I’m not part of that world.’

It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was some of it. Sherlock was looking at him, though, as if he knew exactly what John wasn’t saying. As John met his eyes, his face twisted, slightly. ‘John – ’, he said.

John stood up. ‘I’m making coffee’, he said. ‘Do you want?’

‘No’, said Sherlock.

John crossed to switch on the kettle, facing away, gathering his dignity around him.

‘You help with my work’, said Sherlock to his back. ‘You know about physiology and pathology, and enough chemistry to confirm my conclusions. You can keep up with me when we run. You aren’t afraid of Mycroft, even though you know what he can do. You could probably beat me in a fight, though it would be a close thing, and you can definitely shoot better than I can.’

‘You’re saying I’m useful’, said John to the kettle, bitterly. He felt rather than heard Sherlock crossing to stand behind him.

‘I’m saying you’re indispensable’, said Sherlock, over the sound of boiling water. The kettle clicked off, leaving an uneasy silence.

‘Thanks’, said John, moving to reach for the coffee and a mug, and looking round. Sherlock was leaning on the kitchen table, expression impossible to read. ‘That’s - good, I suppose.’

Sherlock made a sound of frustration. ‘I don’t understand what you want’, he said. ‘I’m sorry I told you about Richard. I hated him at the end, you know, and he hated me. Why would I want you to be like him? What use would that be?’

‘You were fucking him for two years’, said John. ‘Obviously you didn’t hate him all that time.’ He took a sip of his too-hot coffee, burning his mouth. He would have liked to get past, to go to his room and get out of this conversation, but Sherlock was in the way, studying him intently.

‘That is what this is about, then’, said Sherlock. ‘But you’re not gay. If you were, of course I’d want to fuck you.’ He said it as matter-of-factly as if he were commenting on the weather, and slightly impatiently, pointing out the obvious to someone very slow.

John choked on his mouthful of coffee, coughing. Sherlock was still looking at him, eyes flickering over his face: John had no idea what he could read there.

‘Interesting’, Sherlock said, and stepped forward. John’s brain was still paralysed, which must have been why he let Sherlock take the cup from his hand and press him against the counter. Sherlock bent his head forward, so that his curls brushed John’s cheek and his mouth was at his ear, causing little shivers to run down his back.

‘Have you been thinking about my fucking someone else?’, he said, his breath ghosting over John’s ear and neck. ‘Because I could tell you. Or show you.’ John swallowed. He felt that he was several steps behind in this situation, that for Sherlock to be casually talking about sex, to John, with John, in their filthy kitchen, was so improbable that it couldn’t be happening. Except that it was no less improbable than much of Sherlock’s other behaviour. He was getting hard, and Sherlock, the length of his body insistently tight against John’s, would be able to tell: rather than damping his arousal, this thought made him harder. Sherlock shifted his thigh minutely between John’s legs and made a noise of appreciation. John tried to hold himself still, but couldn’t help a small, reflexive movement. Sherlock pulled back slightly and slid his lips across John’s cheek until their lips met, in a tentative kiss. Despite the confidence of his words, he felt tense, as though he were waiting for John to push him away.

Fuck this, John thought. He wasn’t entirely sure where this was going, but he didn’t need to be treated like a shy virgin. If they were going to do this, he wanted to do it fast, now, before he could think about all the reasons why this was a bad idea or Sherlock, always changeable, decided John was boring after all. He opened his mouth against Sherlock’s, and when Sherlock responded, slid his tongue into his mouth and kissed him properly, deep, sliding against him. Sherlock was a good kisser, picking up his cues and responding instantly; his tongue teasing. John slid his arms up Sherlock’s back, gripping him, and used the leverage to push against him; Sherlock in turn leant his full weight against John, so that John could feel that he had an erection. It sent a jolt of lust through him, making him kiss still harder, that Sherlock was equally excited. The counter dug into his back and he was getting a painful crick in his neck, but it felt good to kiss a man, someone heavier and as strong as him. John felt his knees weakening and broke off for air.

‘We should do this lying down’, he said. ‘You’re too tall, and I’m too middle-aged for sex on the kitchen floor’.

Sherlock was breathing hard. He was still fully dressed, buttoned up in suit and shirt, but he looked dishevelled.

‘Upstairs?’ he said, but he bent to lick down John’s neck and bite at it, not gently.

‘Oh God’, said John, his hips thrusting, rubbing against Sherlock’s thigh. ‘Too far. Just… sofa?’

Sherlock made a noise of agreement, returning to John’s mouth, and they staggered awkwardly the few steps across the carpet, still kissing, and collapsed beside each other. John undid Sherlock’s buttons, mouthing the skin below them, while Sherlock lay back, elegantly sprawled, his legs bracketing John, and worked on John’s shirt. When they were both half-naked John paused, self-conscious. Sherlock was watching him closely, his eyes dark. He slid a hand up John’s leg, teasing.

‘I haven’t done this much’, said John, awkwardly.

‘I haven’t done this in over a decade’, said Sherlock.

‘I don’t think you’ve forgotten how’, said John.

‘No’, said Sherlock, thoughtfully. ‘You could fuck me, but we’d have to get up for supplies.’

That sent a bolt of heat to John’s dick, and he had to close his eyes for a moment. ‘Yes’, he agreed, and had to clear his throat. ‘Bit complicated for now. Later, maybe’.

Sherlock smiled, genuine but with a sharp edge. ‘Later’, he said. ‘But for now…’ and his hand slid all the way up, cupping John firmly, and then fumbling with his button and zip. John bit down on an embarrassing noise, and moved to reciprocate. Sherlock’s cock was hard under silk boxers – John smiled at those – and when John eased it out, Sherlock gasped. John’s uncertainty evaporated. Anything that could make Sherlock lose control, anything that John could do to him that would make him sound like that, it was all good. He stroked Sherlock experimentally, twisting his hand, as Sherlock’s own hand wrapped around him made his brain fog over. ‘Wait’, said Sherlock, rougher than usual, and he pushed at John, manoeuvring him. It took John a moment to see what he wanted, and then he was braced above Sherlock, their cocks sliding together, and Sherlock spat on his hand and then reached down and wrapped his fingers around them both.

‘God’, said John. ‘That feels incredible. Oh, God.’ Sherlock didn’t speak, but he was flushed and straining. John let his head fall forwards until their foreheads touched, and then blindly found Sherlock’s mouth. Sherlock gasped again into the kiss and his hand moved faster, pushing John close to the edge. It was too much, too quick, and he couldn’t keep kissing Sherlock through it, making small, desperate sounds into his mouth as he climbed towards the edge and then fell over, coming, like flying, fantastic. Sherlock made a noise himself and then thrust upward sharply, and John felt him coming, felt the wetness on his own stomach and thighs. His arm was trembling. He wanted to collapse on Sherlock’s chest and pass out, but he wasn’t sure if this was a moment for cuddling, or if that was something Sherlock would want or tolerate.

He pushed himself up instead, tucking himself in and pulling up his boxers and trousers from where they were bunched around his waist. Sherlock sat up too, gingerly, and did the same.

‘So’, said John, and then stopped. His brain was still offline, and in any case he wasn’t sure how they had got from last night’s revelations to shagging each other within twenty-four hours, or what it meant that they had.

‘I didn’t think you did men’, said Sherlock. He was frowning, looking put out. ‘Clearly a false conclusion, though I must say that you went out of your way to mislead me.’

‘Is this your idea of pillow talk?’, said John, feeling affectionate and a little relieved, back on safe ground. ‘You can hardly talk. You went out of your way to convince me that you didn’t do anyone.’

‘I don’t, usually’, said Sherlock, reflectively. ‘I can make exceptions, though.’ He turned to look at John. ‘I meant it, you know.’

‘Meant what?’

‘You are indispensable to my work’, said Sherlock. ‘But you’re also an expert in your field. More than one field. It doesn’t matter what the field is – philosophy, chemistry, marksmanship – you’re still an expert. It wasn’t about how clever Richard was at philosophy, that’s irrelevant. It’s about expertise.’

‘Are you saying you’re attracted to my enormous brain?’, said John.

Sherlock snorted. ‘Anyway’, he said, ‘you were right on one count. Richard was insufferably pretentious.’

John felt something like a warm glow starting inside him, something like unfolding happiness. ‘He does sound like a complete wanker’, he agreed.

Sherlock looked at him, raised an eyebrow, and they both cracked up, giggling.

‘God, we’re a mess’, said John, still half-laughing. ‘These trousers need to go in the wash. And I seriously need a pint of water and then a shower.’

‘I could help with the shower’, said Sherlock. ‘If you wanted.’

‘Sure’, said John, only half-seriously, and then he looked at Sherlock properly, sobering up. ‘Yes, you could. And then we could go to bed and…take it from there.’

‘We have a lot to get through’, said Sherlock. He sounded both thoughtful and gleeful, as though he were mentally running through all the sexual acts that could be listed and then ticked off, probably with accompanying notes. John looked at him, grinning. He had no idea what he was letting himself in for, but he wanted to try.

‘Let’s go’, he said, and stood up, holding out a hand.

**Author's Note:**

> At the time when I was a student, which would have been more or less in the same years as canon Sherlock, it was practically impossible for an attractive, intelligent male student at Oxbridge not to be sexually harassed by older male tutors. (Of course, no-one called it sexual harassment then.) So the incidents described here are as reported by friends, though exaggerated: any resemblance to real tutors, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. I also know nothing about philosophy, but I know even less about science - and by far the cleverest and most eccentric Oxford students I ever met were studying Maths and Philosophy. 
> 
> This story (the first I have written, and the first creative writing I've done since I was 14), is to celebrate getting an AO3 account, which has shamed me into acknowledging being a fan after nearly a decade of lurking and reading. If you've read this far, thanks.


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